Old News

May - June 2003
In these months we discovered our fish were breading. We setup a nersary tank for the fish fry.


June 09, 2003
Small Critters
The installation of our pond light led to the discovery of many small critters that ordinarily we'd not notice. Like a moth to a flame much of the pond's microscopic life is drawn to the light at night.

What we didn't expect to see was tiny baby fish fry swimming around the light. It seems our adult fish have been practicing some rather adult activities. With some patience & a plastic tub we were able to catch a number of the baby fish.

Baby Fish!
Fearing that the adult fish would make short work of these little guys & eat them we placed the ones we were able to catch in a fish bowl.

Later on we purchased a small aquarium for the Goldfish fry. We added a few plants, some gravel & a couple of rocks for decoration. The baby fish are doing well on a diet of special baby fish food & have tripled their size in only a few weeks. At this point the larger ones are almost an inch in size already.

The dark blobs on the aquarium glass are snails that stowed away on the few plants we introduced. The snails, like the fish have grown like crazy in the relative safety of the aquarium. They help keep the tank algae free & are almost as entertaining as the fish so for now we're letting them stay.


May 04, 2003
Spring!
Spring is finally here! As you can see the snow & ice is gone & the pond is once again active.

We cranked up the main pump & transformed our troublesome deicer gizmo into its Summer fountain mode...

Defrosted Fish!
The big question of course is... "Did the fish survive?". After the worst Winter in a very long time we were all amazed & very pleased to see that they did indeed survive...

Let there be Light!
To add some nighttime excitement to the pond we installed a pond light. Although not powerful enough to illuminate the entire pond (which I'm sure the fish are happy about) it does offer a fascinating view of the otherwise unviewable inky nocturnal depths...

One interesting thing about the pond light is that it attracts all manner of 'pond wigglies'. At night all sorts of tiny pond critters can be seen dancing in front of the lens. Swimming among the biological soup of insect larvae we were amazed to see tiny fish. It seems our Goldfish, obviously taken with Spring fever, have been performing unmentionables in our pond. Whether these new additions will evade the hungry jaws of their promiscuous parents & grow into full sized fish has yet to be seen. We sure hope they do.

Water Quality
Over the Winter the pond's water turned almost crystal clear, this without any filtration, which was somewhat frustrating. Now that warmer weather is here & we've turned on our filtration pump again, the water has naturally turned pea soup green... GRRRR

Apparently as the water temperature rises in the Spring & before the beneficial bacteria in our bio-filter gets up to speed, its perfectly normal to experience an algae bloom. Well we've got one that's for sure. As a result of this we've decided to start monitoring the pond's water quality. You can check that out at the new Water Quality Section of the site.


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